SPAIN: More than 100 African migrants detained by Moroccan police as they tried to get into the Spanish enclave of Melilla have been rescued after being dumped in the middle of the Sahara desert, according to Spanish media reports.
The migrants, from sub-Saharan Africa, told journalists they had been robbed of their money by Moroccan police, bussed hundreds of kilometres south into the empty desert and then abandoned.
They were eventually rescued by the Polisario Front movement, which seeks independence for Western Sahara. The migrants told journalists at a Polisario Front camp at Bir Lahlu that they feared that many of their companions had died of thirst or hunger.
The reports came as Spain said it would put forward a proposal on immigration with France at an EU summit this month. "Spain and France will present a joint initiative at the next European council on a global plan on a response to immigration . . . which commits the EU much more than it has been up to now," the prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said after talks with his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin.
Spain argued that the EU should tackle the problem of illegal immigration by aiding poor African countries from which migrants originate.
The appearance of migrants in Polisario-held territory appeared to confirm reports that Morocco had dumped some in the western Sahara. But foreign minister Mohammed Benaissa denied such claims at the weekend, saying the Polisario Front and its allies in Algeria were making the story up.